Of all the tags people put on westerns one of the more amusing is the "Adult" western. Left over from the serial days, it is meant to be a warning for children (ie. this movie will bore you) but in truth it is just as much a flashing amber light for its intended audience (ie. this movie will bore you).
It's like in "Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide:" any time he describes a film as being "not for all tastes" what he's really saying is "stupid people need not apply."
To qualify as an Adult Western, the film in question must not contain any of the following: scalping, quick-draws, Randolph Scott (with the exception of "Ride the High Country"), Sharon Stone, songs about the plot, or that-scene-where-the-old-guy- teaches-the-young-guy-how-to-shoot-a-gun.
Perhaps the finest, clearest example of the Adult Western is Edward Dmytryk's "Broken Lance." Featuring Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, and Richard Widmark, "Broken Lance" is a rare bird in that it uses more conventions of the dramatic genre than the western, yet it is undeniably a horse opera. The plot, borrowed from Mankiewicz's "House of Strangers" which was in turn borrowed from "King Lear," centers around patriarch Tracy's unwillingness to divide up his land amongst his sons, one of whom he plays favourite (Robert Wagner) to the chagrin of the others.
Tracy is extraordinary. He is impossibly relaxed, natural: this is better than Brando. The grizzled old cattle rancher has surely been done to death, but here we find new life. The most stunning, revelatory scenes come with Tracy alone with his Indian wife, sharing intimacies, exchanging ideas. We learn that the character's strengths stem not from stubborness or will power, but from his ability to take good advice.
Wagner is solid as the young romantic interest, and Richard Widmark steals a number of scenes with his trademark seering anger. What really makes Widmark's performance special is his ability to tap the audience's sympathy, even with such a twisted, resentful character.
"Broken Lance" feels like an epic but is magnificently short at only 96 minutes. Credit for the imagined sense of enormity must go to both the writer, Richard Murphy, and the cinematographer, Joe MacDonald. Murphy for fitting a novel's worth of information into a single chapter without ever once short-changing the plot, characters, or the audience, and MacDonald for his glorious depth of field and use of enclosed spaces.
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